After a time he said: "We must stay here until night. Then we will go back to the pueblo if we can find the way. As for food, we can have none to-day. There are no berries at this time of year, and we have nothing to shoot game with. Other people have gone the day without food, and we can. When we get back to the pueblo, even if we cannot reach the larder, we can find the corral without being seen. I don't believe that the soldiers have found it, and the Indians in charge of the mustangs will let us have two when they know what has happened. Now, do not let us talk. It will make us more hungry."
Adan groaned, but accepted the decree of silence. The day wore on to noon, and in the unbroken stillness the boys ventured out of the grimy tree and lay at full length on the turf. The great redwoods towered in endless corridors, their straight columns unbroken by branch or twig for a hundred and fifty feet. Through the green close arbours above came an occasional rift of sunshine, but the aisles were full of cold green light. The boys shivered in their coyote skin coats and drew close together; they dared not run about to keep warm; they must husband their strength, and hunger was biting. There was no wind in the tree-tops, no murmur of creek, only the low hum of the forest, that in their strained ear-sense grew to a roar. Finally they fell asleep, and it was dark when Roldan awoke. He shook Adan.
"Come," he said; and his partner, grumbling but acquiescent, got to his feet and tramped heavily over the soft ground.
They had fled beyond paths, and Roldan could only trust to his locality sense, which he knew to be good. But more than once they were brought to halt before a wall of brush, which no man could have penetrated without an axe. Then they would feel their way along its irregular bristling side for a mile or more before it thinned sufficiently for egress.
Frequently they heard the deadly rattle, and more than once the near cry of a panther, but there was nothing to do but push on. Precautions would have availed them nothing, and there was no refuge nearer than the pueblo. Sometimes they walked down aisles unchoked by brush but full of moving shadows, above which sounded the lonely continuous hooting of the owl. Now and again bats whirred past, and once a startled wildcat scurried across the path and darted up a tree, crying with terror.
"If we only don't meet a bear," thought Roldan, who dared not speak lest his voice should shake courage and terrors apart.
It was midnight when Adan announced with what emphasis was left in him,--
"We are lost."
Roldan answered through his teeth: "Yes, but I think I hear the creek.
When we find that, all we have to do is to follow it south."
"My heart is in the South," muttered Adan. "We might follow that."
"I am ashamed of you," said Roldan, with a lofty scorn which was good for five words and no more.
It was a half hour later that they stood upon the high bank of the creek and looked gratefully up at the broad strip of night light. After the dense shadows of the forest the cold light of stars seemed more radiant than noon-day.
"We cannot follow along the bank for more than a little way at a time, on account of the ferns and brush," said Roldan. "We should walk three times the distance, and perhaps get lost again. I am going to wade. Will you?"
"Madre de dios! And get rheumatism? My teeth clack together at the thought."
"You will not be able to keep still long enough to get rheumatism, my friend. By the grace of Mary we shall be on horseback all day to-morrow.
The water is not a foot deep, and the chill only lasts a moment. Take off your boots."
"What is left of them," muttered Adan. But they were better than no boots, and he took them off, and slung them round his neck. Roldan scrambled down the bank and plunged into the creek. Adan, after a moment's hesitation, followed with audible reluctance. He thrust the tip of one foot into the icy water, withdrew it with a shout, tried the other; then seeing that Roldan was splashing far ahead, jumped in with both feet and ran along the slippery rocks, wondering when the change of temperature would occur. His teeth clattered loudly. He pulled in and executed a war-dance on the stones, then sat down on a fallen boulder and rubbed his feet violently. Roldan kept steadily on, mindful of his dignity as leader; but only as Adan joined him had his teeth ceased from clattering and the warmth crawled back to his feet.
Cold, hungry, inexpressibly weary, the boys plodded on, sometimes in the clear light of stars, sometimes under the chill blackness of meeting trees. Fish and other slimy things darted across their feet; they stepped to their waists into more than one treacherous pool. The dark blue of the sky had turned to grey when Roldan raised his arm and pointed to a squat dark object on the summit of the cliff.
"A hut," he said. "We are at the pueblo."
The boys crawled softly up the almost perpendicular bank and peered over the edge. To all appearances the pueblo was deserted. If the soldiers were there--and their horses were not--they slept within the huts. The animal instinct, so bravely repressed, overcame the adventurers. They ran across the open to the hut where the food was kept, and ate for fifteen minutes without speaking or taking the trouble to hide themselves.
